The suggestion box has gone high-tech.
This weekend, New York City will host its first “hackathon.” The event, called Reinvent NYC.GOV, on Saturday and Sunday will bring together volunteers who have ideas for improving the city’s website, NYC.gov.
Some of the best techies in New York have signed up to spend a weekend offering ideas, and the city is listening.
Rachel Sterne, chief digital officer for New York City, touts the program as a great way to get input from civic-minded people who will bring a fresh perspective.
“NYC.gov has almost as many visitors each year as Central Park and should be similarly cared for,” Sterne wrote in an article on Mashable.com.
Soliciting suggestions from the public, adds Sterne, “helps remove subjectivity from the design process by clearly showing what the public wants and needs.”
The concept of soliciting ideas from customers and employees is nothing new, of course, but forward-thinking organizations are using new and interesting ways to allow a fresh set of eyes and ears to look at problems and offer suggestions for improvement.
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The government’s ability to collect taxes from passengers on airfares expired amid the budgetary impasse last Friday. Instead of reducing fares to reflect that change, many airlines kept prices at levels they would have been at if taxes were still included in the cost of a ticket. Airlines then pocketed the difference. The Federal Aviation Administration can’t collect these taxes until its budget is reinstated.
In a letter sent to the airlines on Tuesday, Senators Jay Rockefeller and Maria Cantwell said that airlines’ actions to take advantage of the tax holiday could have “long-term negative repercussions for the industry.”
Rockefeller and Cantwell are chairs of the committee that has oversight over the FAA budget, and the aviation subcommittee, respectively. The letter asked the airlines to either put the tax-holiday profits into an escrow account to support government aviation programs, or undo the fare hikes.
The FAA is losing approximately $30 million a day in taxes due to the expiration of its revenue-raising authority by Congress, according to Bloomberg News.
Uniserve Communications Corp. is pleased to announce the $2 million sale of its Eastern assets allowing the company to clear its debt and focus on building out its offerings for its existing customer base. This strategic move allows Uniserve to develop and build our business to business market and focus on our Cloud Computing launch, said Michael Schmidt, Uniserve CEO.
With this transaction, Uniserve has paved the way to build our Dell/Joyent Cloud Computing Solution for the business to business market in Canada, Schmidt said. The demand for Cloud based business services in Canada is overwhelming. The Canadian Government has now adopted an official Cloud Computing Strategy and the US Government already budgeting $1 Billion exclusively to Cloud Computing, Schmidt said, Uniserve is excited to be one of the first Canadian companies to enter the North American Cloud Computing market estimated to be worth over $100 Billion by 2015. He added, The Cloud Computing market is expected to grow by 50% in 2012 alone. Read more…
Disappointing earnings from industrial giant Caterpillar cast a bit of gloom across Wall Street on Friday, but upbeat results from a batch of technology companies helped underpin the stock market.
The mining and construction equipment maker, hit by rising costs, reported a profit a few cents shy of analysts’ expectations. Its shares tumbled nearly 6%, weighing on the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
Caterpillar, the world’s largest heavy equipment maker, hiked its full-year forecasts, but investors fixated on its cautious view of the global economy.
The broad Standard and Poor’s 500 inched higher, however, and the tech-packed Nasdaq Composite Index climbed 0.9%, boosted by forecast-topping results from computer processor maker AMD and others.
AMD’s shares surged 19% after it said its sales would jump 12% in the third quarter. Analysts had been expecting growth of only about 8% as the huge popularity of items like the iPad bites into personal computer sales.
Strong demand for flash memory devices that store data in smartphones and tablet computers, as well as cost-cutting, boosted revenues at SanDisk. The company’s sales climbed 17% and sailed past Wall Street forecasts.
Fast-food giant McDonald’s shares rose after it supersized its profits, luring more customers with its McCafé coffees and frozen drinks.
In June, the company’s same-store sales, which exclude recently opened or closed stores, rose 7.7% worldwide and 6.9% in the U.S., their largest jumps in around three years.
General Electric beat forecasts thanks to a turnaround at its financial arm, GE Capital, offsetting weakness in its energy unit, but investors drove its shares a touch lower anyway.
Mobile phone company Verizon Wireless also beat analysts’ profit estimates and lured more subscribers. But its shares slipped 2% on news it had signed up 1.3 million fewer iPhone users than rival AT&T and its users spent less per month than expected.
With News Wire Services
Competition for online eyeballs is heating up. Retail giant Walmart launched on its website an instant video-on-demand service with Vudu, an online streaming service it acquired back in February.
The new offering on Walmart.com is similar to the Vudu Web-based service available on select Internet-capable TVs and set-top boxes. Consumers can browse through Vudu’s library of movies and TV showsincluding 3D titlesand then play them instantly from . Rental costs range from $1 to $7 while outright purchases will range from $5 to $22. And unlike Netflix, which recently hiked prices for its video streaming services, there is no monthly membership charges to use Vudu on Walmart.com. (For other online streaming video options, see: How pricier Netflix stands up to other options.)
The downside to the Vudu service on Walmart: The titles offered are standard-definition quality only.
Consumer Reports recently took a closer look at online streaming services, which are much more than just websites for your computer. Read more…